This article considers differences between the representation of mutation in science fiction films from the 1950s and the present, and identifies distinctive changes over this time period, both in relation to the narrative causes of genetic disruption and in the aesthetics of its visual display. Discerning an increasingly abject quality to science fiction mutations from the 1970s onwards—as a progressive tendency to view the physically opened body, one that has a seemingly fluid interior–exterior reversal, or one that is almost beyond recognition as humanoid—the article connects a propensity for disgust to the corresponding socio-cultural and political zeitgeist. Specifically, it suggests that such imagery is tied to a more expansive ‘structure of feeling’, proposed by Raymond Williams and emergent since the 1970s, but gathering momentum in later decades, that reflects an ‘opening up’ of society in all its visual, socio-cultural and political configurations. Expressly, it parallels a change from a repressive, patriarchal society that constructed medicine as infallible and male doctors as omnipotent to one that is generally more liberated, transparent and equitable. Engaging theoretically with the concept of a ‘structure of feeling’, and critically with scientific, cinematic and cultural discourses, two post-1970s’ ‘mutation’ films, The Fly (1986) and District 9 (2009), are considered in relation to their pre-1970s’ predecessors, and their aesthetics related to the perceptions and articulations of the medical profession at their respective historic moments, locating such instances within a broader medico-political canvas.

Neo-Victorian Villains is the first edited collection to examine the afterlives of such Victorian villains as Dracula, Svengali, Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde, exploring their representation in neo-Victorian drama and fiction. In addition, Neo-Victorian Villains examines a number of supposedly villainous types, from the spirit medium and the femme fatale to the imperial ‘native’ and the ventriloquist, and traces their development from Victorian times today. Chapters analyse recent theatre, films and television – from Ripper Street to Marvel superhero movies – as well as classic Hollywood depictions of Victorian villains. In a wide-ranging opening chapter, Benjamin Poore assesses the legacy of nineteenth-century ideas of villains and villainy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

After a century of reinvention and reinterpretation, Western movies continue to contribute to the cultural understanding of the United States. Western archetypes remain important emblems of the American experience, relating a complex and coded narrative about heroism and morality, masculinity and femininity, westward expansion and technological progress, and assimilation and settlement. In this collection of new essays, 21 contributors from around the globe examine the "cowboy cool" iconography of film and television Westerns-from bounty hunters in buckskin jackets to the seedy saloons and lonely deserts.

This chapter is from a book which analyzes post-9/11 literature, film, and television through an interdisciplinary lens, taking into account contemporary debates about spatial practices, gentrification, cosmopolitanism, memory and history, nostalgia, the uncanny and the abject, postmodern virtuality, the politics of realism, and the economic and social life of cities. Featuring an international group of scholars, the volume theorizes how literary and visual representations expose the persistent conflicts that arise as cities rebuild in the shadow of past ruins.

Part way through the most recent Bond film, Skyfall (Mendes 2012), villainous antagonist, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) removes his facial prosthesis to reveal a horrific disfigurement. It emerges that Silva is a terrorist who targets political sites and public transport systems in a manner similar to Al-Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001 and the London Underground in 2005. Alongside other productions of the new millennium, Skyfall illustrates how the terrorist figure is increasingly signaled, and even defined by physical impairment. Such films often display a particular fascination with the character’s peculiarity to the extent that it becomes not only pivotal to characterization but also to the narrative. Indeed, in Skyfall we learn that the cause of Silva’s disfigurement motivates his terrorist activities and certain scenes consciously present his physical difference as a source of spectacle, rather than as being merely incidental to the narrative. Although villainy has long been associated with some form of physical difference, since 9/11, it is especially associated with facial deviation. Moreover, if facially disfigured villains have appeared in films before 9/11, they did not necessarily display psychological or physical weakness. Contrastingly, the disfigured post-9/11 perpetrator is either psychologically or physically compromised in relation to his/her physiognomic aberration and is also often simultaneously coded as ‘other’ through subtle suggestions of homosexuality and foreignness, these combined features ostensibly constituting a ‘new wave’ of cinematic terrorist representation. While there is no obvious explanation for such a trend, these portrayals may be informed by real-world mediated imagery of radical Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza. Hamza, who had long been suspected of terrorist activity and was convicted of supporting terrorism in 2015, lost an eye and both hands, allegedly in a terrorist incident. One of his hands is replaced by a hook, and he is often pictured holding up his arm, the hook encircling his functional eye. Otherwise, this contemporary mode of signifying the on-screen terrorist may be a conscious effort to depart from other currently contentious terrorist stereotypes (especially the Islamic middle-Eastern character). Indeed, the film Iron Man (Favreau 2008) attracted criticism for its depiction of Afghani fundamentalists because of its portrayal of their leader, Raza (Faran Tahir) as a “typical Middle Eastern hysteric [who] rages about in inflated, un-translated gasps of Arabic” (Catalan). The association of facial disfigurement with bodily weakness and/or psychological instability stems from a broader trend in representations of masculinity, this itself connected to a range of issues beginning well before 9/11. The combination of physical and/or mental fallibility and facial anomaly therefore constitutes a unique development in post-/11 portrayals of terrorist figures. This essay therefore considers the association of disfigurement with the on-screen terrorist by arguing that recent representations of the post-9/11 era, though retaining allusions to ‘foreignness’, depart from Middle Eastern stereotypes to focus on deformity as an alternate means to reconfigure the ‘other’. With emphasis on the Bond franchise – because of its long lineage and preoccupation with villainy - and primarily referring to Casino Royale, and Skyfall, this chapter compares pre- and post-9/11 villains, and engages with theories of ‘freakery’ (Garland-Thomson), criminality (Lombroso), and terrorism (Kassimeris; Jackson; Nacos; Whittaker).

From Destination Tokyo (1943) to Youngblood Hawke (1964), among many other films, few filmmakers created as unique a body of work in the US as Delmer Daves (1904-1977), but few filmmakers have been as critically overlooked in existing scholarly literature. Daves is often regarded as an embodiment of the self-effacing craftsmanship of classical and post-war Hollywood, which helps explain his relative neglect by film critics and scholars. As the first study of Daves's career, this collection in the ReFocus series seeks to deepen our understanding of the filmmaker and problematize existing conceptions of him as a competent by conventional studio man. Part of the ReFocus: The American Directors Series, which aims to bring influential, yet neglected, American directors to the attention of a new audience of scholars and students.

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